If you have been following my blog, you will know that I like using natural light when it comes to photographing my kids. Natural light is free, but it is not available all the time, unlike using flash photography or artificial light, you can use it all the time. So the real challenge when using natural light is that, you need to act quickly before it gets too dark.

The photograph of my son Raphael above wee taken in the doorway, I tell my son to stand in the doorway but he refuse to stand, instead he sits on his little plastic bicycle and move here and there. Actually the real challenge here is not about lighting, but to have a high level of patience. Personally for me, I will never give up until I got what I really want.

I’ve to make all kind of crazy things just to get my son attention, he is always moving around. So the first thing that you need to pay attention when photographing super active kids is to use a very fast shutter speed. Here I use shutter speed of 1/200. I like to have a clean image, so I use ISO 100, the grain there was added later during editing in the Adobe Lightroom. There were no “noise” visible at ISO 100 for this images.

For the beginners out there, if you notice, the lighting here is a little bit tricky. It can easily fools your camera metering because there were large area of dark side, if you use Auto setting, the probability of getting overexposed image is high, so the solution is to use to Spot Metering and Lock the Exposure or use Manual Mode like what I’m doing here. What I’m trying to say here is to get the exposure right especially the shutter speeds (make it around 1/100 and above) and then just focus on capturing the right moment.

It’s been quite awhile since I posted a black and white portraiture of my children. Lately I like colour photography more than black and white, maybe I want to remember the colours of their clothing and the colours of their environment.

Famous Canadian photographer Ted Grant once said that “When you photograph people in colour, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!”. I couldn’t agree more but there is a situation where colours also express something about the person, about their belief, religion and maybe their character or personality.

Anyway I don’t have much time to discuss about that, in fact lately I rarely have time on my own. The photograph above were taken with 50 mm fixed prime lens. All of the photographs above were taken with natural light as usual under the shade, to get even lighting on their face. It seems so simple but the truth is, it never get easier to photograph them.

Some of you might notice that the black and white is not really “black,” yes you are right but then, lately I think this kind of greyscale of lighter version of black and white seems quite popular and I like to experiment.

Sometimes it pays to keep it simple when photographing people. The background has nothing much to shout about, just an empty beach with no significant landmark about this place, so I try to concentrate on my subject, which is my family. The photograph of me with my children is taken by my wife.

At first I did try to edit this photographs in colours but I just couldn’t get the mood that I want, so I decided to make it into black and white to keep it simple, to take out a distractions that came from the colour of the clothes.

All photographs above were taken with Canon 5D Mark II together with fixed 50 mm prime lens.

“All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land or down among the crystals of waves or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms, everywhere and always we are in God’s eternal beauty and love. So universally true is this, the spot where we chance to be always seems the best.”

Wanted to share some of my latest family photograph taken in the late afternoon, the lighting was quite great but decided to share it here in lighter version of black and white. All photograph were taken with a 50 mm fixed focal length at f/2.

Photograph taken during a full day rehearsal of Malaysia 56th Independence Square in Kuala Lumpur. I spend quite a bit of time here, taking pictures of this flag bearers getting ready. I’m sorry guys, I’m not really into writing a long article here, too much going on here and I’m quite busy lately but I still have a lot of photographs to be shared. Anyway just enjoy this photograph and one more thing, to those of you who plan to visit Malaysia especially Kuala Lumpur, please be sure to visit this place known locally as “Dataran Merdeka” or Independence Square. One last thing, next year is “Visit Malaysia 2014″.

Visit Malaysia Year 2014 is a campaign by Tourism Malaysia that will promote tourism to the country internationally through several mega events and programs. Regardless of the month of visit, Malaysia promises visitors something special and unique to make their time here truly memorable and enjoyable!

Some of the photograph taken during the Official Visit of H.E Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, President of South Africa and Spouse to Malaysia on 26th August 2013 at Putrajaya.

The flow of the event, more or less will be quite the same. Once the president arrived, he will inspect the honour guard, then he will be introduce to cabinet ministers and the ambassadors to Malaysia and proceed to have a quick photo op for photographers at the top of the stairs outside Prime Ministers Office.

For the top photograph above where, the South African President walk with Malaysia’s Prime Minister were taken when Najib Razak accompanied President Zuma to his official car to continue with other agenda for the day.

I think I’d written quite a few blog post regarding this welcoming ceremony for President and Prime Ministers who have visited Malaysia. Normally photojournalist will carry the best equipment that they have for the job. Among others is 300 mm or 400 mm lens together with 70-200 mm and wide angle lens such as 24-70 mm for wider shot.

Most of the photojournalist will send the photos to their respective news agency right from the Prime Ministers office, so that they don’t have to get back to their office and be ready for the next task.

About the editing, only minimal editing will be done such as colour correction, levelling and cropping, captioning and we’re done.